Once you have used your hand signals to get up close to the opposing teams base the time to open up and let fly is at hand! And no, not just slinging plastic, open your mouth and communicate with your team mates too!
Your team mates also should be verbal after the contact begins. Taking the names of the hand signals as a good basis, start letting each other know what is going on. Things like “Eyes on three!” let your team mates know how many people you can see from your position, and if you only have a few people on the other team they pretty much know to focus their firepower in the direction you are looking.
Communication is critical to a successful skirmish, and in larger events the teams with the best communication can often overcome a numerically superior force (tactics and training certainly help as well). Obviously useless chatter won't help, so try to stay on topic, and lots of people casually chatting away makes it hard to hear critical information like “hey, they are flanking us! Eyes on sixteen! Guys! Eyes on sixteen!!”
So let's just go back over some of the basic communications as a refresher. Some groups echo what was said (repeat it) or reply “confirm” then the statement so the person up front knows the team heard them. Example; “confirm eyes on three, right”.
“Contact!” - This means you have taken fire from someone on the opposing team. Usually you also add where it came from, such as “contact left!” Yell this one, let your guys all know you are taking fire!
“Eyes on!” - Another one to yell out, this means you can see at least one confirmed opponent. Adding a number and direction after eyes on lets your team mates know how many you can see and where they are, such as “Eyes on three, right!”
“Hear something” - this one often is said quieter, so only guys close to you can hear it. This alerts them that they should be checking in the direction you indicate. Example; hear something left.
“Take cover!” - means just that, get low and behind something the will help to protect you from incoming bbs.
“Rally on me!” - This means your team mates should gather close to your position, and is usually used by your team leader to regroup your unit. This is especially useful after just escaping an ambush, for example. “Rally at ...” is the command to regroup at a certain point, such as “Rally at the bridge!”.
There are dozens of other things to pass along, and your team may well come up with code words to mean something special that your opponents may not understand. These code words could be anything from “Code red!” which would mean bring up the heavy weapons or what ever, or it could mean nothing and just be a distraction tactic.
In closing, we need to cover one more thing that is often missed in verbal communication, and that is pass phrases. When you have a position established, you need to be able to tell if someone coming up on you is a foe or friend coming to reinforce you. If you have a pass phrase in place, you call out your challenge phrase and if they are friendly they respond with the pass phrase or word.
An example here might be “marco!” and the person coming up on the position replies “polo” to let you know he is on your team. Of course you do not want a challenge phrase that is easy to guess the answer to, so try something that is harder to guess and could have a number of correct answers. An example here could be “red”. There is no immediately obvious answer so they have to take a guess in the dark. The pass word could be “green”, “asphalt” or “rover”. Or even several dozen other things.
Of course, it is possible the opposing team will guess or overhear your pass phrase, so you might want to change it midway through the game or at certain intervals through out the day.
So get out there, and open your mouth and let each other know where the enemy is hiding so you can sling some plastic!
Move out!
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